LUMPENPROLETARIAT—With all of the escalating tensions across the nation, as a result of increasing resistance to police terrorism and cops killing unarmed civilians with impunity, Davey D (co-host of Hard Knock Radio on Pacifica Radio:  KPFA, Berkeley, CA), becomes an invaluable boots-on-the-ground asset.  Lumpenproletariat.org will archive (after final exams) as much of Davey D’s important interviews from the streets of USA with some of the most dedicated activists around today.

In the meantime, don’t sleep on the following free speech radio broadcasts before they must be taken down from KPFA.org. [1]

—Messina

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HARD KNOCK RADIO:  The following audio archives should be available for another day or so because…[1]

• 23 APR 2015:  Includes:
  • KPFA News Headlines
  • Discussion of police infiltration of #BlackLivesMatter and the corrupt criminalisation of activists (and citizens simply trying to invigorate civil engagement [2]) under post-P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act auspices
  • (c. 42:40) sociopolitically conscious R&B
  • (c. 48:10) Black Agenda Report with Glen Ford
  • (c. 53:00) sociopolitically conscious hip-hop music

• 22 APR 2015:  Includes:
  • KPFA News Headlines
  • (c. 7:00) Davey D reports from a street protest against “the architects of gentrification” and rising rent costs for urban communities, urban economics, and gentrification.  “It seems to be they don’t care about working class people,” says one protester.  ‘We want rent control’ and ‘affordable housing.’  ‘We also want the big techs to pay their fair share of taxes.’ Jo-eesha Detta(sp?)
  • ‘I grew up in Oakland, born and raised.  It was predominantly black people and now it’s more mixed.’
  • ‘These are the folks who have been priced out of San Francisco.’  ‘the problem that gentification is causing.’  ‘Their cohesion is here in the neighbourhoods they grew up in and have been living in.’
  • Scott’s Restaurant confrontation, “even though most of the doors have been blocked.”  Chanters chant:  “Evictions are everywhere!”
  • (c. 16:00) Music Break:  Hard Knock Radio theme
  • (c. 17:00)  Anita Johnson speaks with Gulf South Rising representative
  • on “the gulf coast communities”, five years after the BP Oil Disaster.  An update from Houston, Texas.
  • ‘We organised a funeral at BP Headquarters.  They refused to sign our petition asking them to come clean and stop the legal maneuvering that they’ve been doing for the last five years.  So, we’re basically trying to get them to stand…’  2038
  • ‘impact on the fishing communites…Vietnamese fishermen were impacted the most.  They were wanting to deliver the petition.  They are seeing their catch diminish.  There is a fear of a collapse of the fishing stock.  Many communities are completely dependent on water.  And the BP Oil Disaster has deeply impacted their lives.  BP has made a terrible situation a whole lot worse.’
  • ‘relocation of a small tribe, due to the BP Oil disaster’
  • ‘There has been an abdication of responsibility, not just of Obama, but I think also the liberal left, the well-funded groups.  We’re trying to do what we can, but I feel there’s a lot of talking out the sides of their mouths.  They need to put their money where their excitement is.  This cannot be just on the backs of a few people.  We need help in ways that are not co-opting our message, but providing tangible support.  We appreciate Hard Knock Radio covering this issue of the ongoing battle dealing with the BP Oil disaster fallout.’
  • Contact:  GulfFuture.org and Gulf South Rising, or by phone 504.534-5313
  • 40:00  ‘Assigning police officers in public schools has become a widespread practice.  More than half of all public schools have officers stationed in schools.  Some people say, police can actually make things worse for children.’  The lead organiser for the Black Organizing Project.  Oakland, CA.
  • ‘This has been a yearlong process, starting in April of last year to eliminate [] as well as putting a cap on []  insure there is a 2.3. million dollar allocation and continue the program.  Also, we want to insure [].’
  • ‘Tonight, the Oakland Board has agreed to some concessions, which will mean more young people will be in our schools and not on our streets.  We want transparency.  We know that Restorative Justice and other programs are saving lives.’
  • “We’re students, not suspects.”  Police are imposing their punitive justice in school altercations, which had already resolved the issue by school officials.  But police come in and override the school officials peace-keeping to inflict maximum criminalisation of youth and punishment.
• 21 APR 2015:  Includes discussions of:  the state of our police state in the USA; the history of San Francisco’s Upper Room, an important community institution.
• 20 APR 2015:  no longer available

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COUNTERPUNCH—(19 FEB 2015) For activists throughout the Gulf Coast 2015 is a year of anniversaries. It is the fifth anniversary of the BP oil spill; the 10-year anniversary of hurricanes Katrina and Rita as well as a BP refinery explosion in Texas City that killed 15 people; and 40 years since a massive influx of Vietnamese immigrants, who are now at the heart of the region’s fishing industry, began settling the region. And perhaps most notably the fiftieth anniversary of the march on Selma and the Voting Rights Act.

Everything from the Gulf Coast’s history and environment to its politics and culture is shaped by the energy economy. 

To commemorate these historic events, communities across the region are organizing a series of actions under the banner, “Gulf South Rising.” According to the group’s website their aim is “to inform and engage Gulf South communities around the climate crisis and its impact on the region.” (The tagline for the group goes: “the seas are rising and so are we.”)

Tackling climate change is not easy anywhere but perhaps especially so in this part of the country. The Gulf Coast is in many ways the oil and gas industry’s stomping grounds. It was here after all that democratic senator Mary Landrieu made her last stand fighting for the Keystone XL Pipeline. It also happens to be one of the regions most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, where sea levels are rising and coastal lands are vanishing. According to NOAA, every year an area off the Gulf Coast larger than Manhattan disappears due to subsidence and sea level rise.

Learn more at COUNTERPUNCH.

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[1]  Audio archives are routinely taken down after a couple of weeks due to copywrong restrictions.  I used to be in contact a bit, during my KPFA/MediaRoots.org days, with Davey D.  But I lost contact since I’ve been at UMKC.  Although he recently said hello and asked how I’ve been via facebook a few weeks ago.  But stuff tends to get lost/buried on facebook.  Hence, we’ve created Lumpenproletariat.org, as a permanent hub for ghetto life and working class life.

[2]  Notably, Robert Putnam’s best-selling book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000) discussed the lamentable decline in civic engagement in the USA.  But, perhaps, Putnam overlooked police terrorism intimidating, brutalising, and even killing in broad daylight civilians attempting to exercise their Constitutionally-protected human and civil rights of free speech, association, and assembly.  I’ll have to re-read and check.  (But, at a glance, seems no:  Index lists “police” and “community involvement” on pages 317-318, 336, 346 and “employment of” on pages 145-146.  “Community policing” only discusses police propaganda campaigns to nominally deputize citizens to identify with police.  The Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) is held up as one example.  There is no mention of local Copwatch groups.  On page 336, Putnam mentions Thomas Jefferson’s proposal to amend the “Constitution to facilitate grassroots democracy.”  This is reminiscent, more recently, of US Day of Rage‘s pre-Occupy Wall Street calls for a constitutional amendment to move our society from a one-dollar-one-vote system to a one-person-one-vote system.  On page 346, Putnam writes:  “Police close more cases when citizens monitor neighborhood comings and goings.”  But Putnam does not mention the right of neighborhood CopWatch groups’ need to monitor the police, themselves, as police terrorism is stifling civic engagement, especially when that engagement involves shining light on police terrorism and cops criminalising activists, i.e., civically-engaged citizens, and killing unarmed civilians with impunity.  On pages 145-146, Putnam only discusses the changing size of police forces.  Admittedly, Bowling Alone is pre-9/11.  Nevertheless, state repression of civic engagement, aka activism, has been a perennial problem.  This major inhibitor of civic engagement that is police intimidation and terrorism of civilians is definitely a gaping hole in Putnam’s analysis.  )

[Last modified 23:34 CDT 5 MAY 2015]